[TazeTSchnitzel]

I made a social network in middle school. Nobody used it, but that taught me how to write terrible PHP applications.

With that same knowledge I made another social network ~2/3 years later for an online community, and it worked better. Eventually I shut it down. In 2012 I revived it and very quickly learned the value of not mixing your business and presentation logic (refactoring the codebase to be maintainable was an absolute chore), and of preventing XSS and XSRF (someone set their avatar to the URL "/logout").

[xiaoma]

A lot of people make a lot of money from writing terrible PHP applications that solve a particular business need. Sometimes it's shocking to me to be honest!

[elorant]

I guess you've never heard of Sharepoint :)

[nchelluri]

Tell me, what's that space like? Know it's a thing, (intranet sites or some such?), but that's about it. Very curious about it, heard people make a lot in there.

[elorant]

I've heard of guys earning north of $150 per hour and the demand is quite high. It's pretty big in the corporate world, back in 2011 78% of Fortune 500 companies were using it. It's an Intranet/Document management platform and it collaborates with MS Office.

[e12e]

A lot of people make a lot of money from writing terrible applications that [some people claim] solve a particular business need. I used to be shocked, now I'm just sad ;-)

See also: http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Jan/55 [Full Disclosure: It essentially wins crypto vulnerability bingo! gilfether/phpcrypt]